


right here, empty for days [a Written On My Heart remix]

by VerdantMoth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Lucky the Dog - Freeform, M/M, Pansies, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:07:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24575791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: Soulmarks are funky lil' things. He can’t feel the lines on his skin, doesn’t know they’re there until he spots them. (Sometimes he thinks that’s a bit of a fluke on fate's part. What happens if ya miss ‘em? Or ya can’t see ‘em? Maybe fate knows though, which ones are meant to be seen.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 37
Kudos: 198
Collections: Winterhawk Remix 2020





	right here, empty for days [a Written On My Heart remix]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Written On My Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22706956) by [Nny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny). 



Bucky is sitting outside of his tub, scalding water occasionally whispering against his skin from the shower he hasn’t quite made it into. The lines are on his hands, sparkles that seem to catch in the light shaded a garish purple. They say something, mean something, but he doesn’t know.

He’s cold, and lonely, and Steve has been gone for six months.

These are just facts, intangible, but cruel and hard all the same. 

He shivers, one hard, full-body jerk, and the light catches something on his thigh. Bucky prods the skin and muscle, curiously. 

Soulmarks are funky lil' things. He can’t _feel_ the lines on his skin, doesn’t know they’re there until he spots them. (Sometimes he thinks that’s a bit of a fluke on fate's part. What happens if ya miss ‘em? Or ya can’t see ‘em? Maybe fate knows though, which ones are meant to be seen.)

He can’t feel them, the lines on his skin or the scrape as they’re written, but his soulmate has a penchant for glitter, and somehow, _somehow_ , the flecks always catches the light.

There aren’t words on his thigh, not real, human ones composed of actual people letters. There are, however, a series of loops, hills, and valleys, all squashed up together. Kinda looks like a cartoon speech bubble filled with confusion. Or expletives.

Does the soulmark censor?

Bucky checks the cartoon on the back of his hand; a crude stick figure with more funky shapes floating above his head. He’s holding what only experience has taught Bucky is a slice of pizza, one line-arm shoved into a dog’s face. 

Yeah, it censors.

Bucky shifts a little at the overwhelming numbness of his ass, and he catches sight of a purple face on his _toe_. He can’t help but give a huff-of-breath laughter at the sad thing.

Steve used to leave his pens everywhere, even the fancy expensive ones Bucky always scolded him over. Now though, as he scoots around on his _clean, thank you_ , bathroom floor to grab the piss-brown marker under the sink, he’s glad.

He’s not exactly sure what to do, where to answer, so he draws three lines below his toes and adds a line going straight up.

He regrets it as soon as he draws it, feels stripped down and too honest, and he finally crawls into the scalding water.

He scrubs at his foot first, and resents the quality of the marker.

By the time Bucky crawls his way back out of the shower, sort of clean and bruised across his foot, his soulmate has also cleaned off all the ink.

It makes Bucky a little sad, a little worried.

It’s not like Purple Glitter to do that, and not add something new. 

But Bucky does a full body inspection, twisting and turning until he’s seen every inch of skin someone could write on without bending impossibly, and there’s nada.

It takes the energy he doesn’t have anyway, and Bucky slinks to the couch still damp, and buries himself in blankets that don’t smell like Steve anymore.

-

Steve left, not because he was cruel or vicious, but because _Sam_ . It’s enough to make Bucky _hate_ Sam, even if he is good, kind, strong. Even if the thick, stroppy letters he writes constantly show up on Steve’s inner arm. 

Seriously though, Sam makes _handwriting_ look _pretentious_.

They offered Bucky a spare bedroom, but not even he’s masochist enough to subject himself to that love fest.

Still. 

He misses stupid things. Steve’s golden puppy, the sound of sleepy feet coming for coffee. Indian on Thursday and fighting over the Netflix queue.

Mostly, it’s those little brushes of skin. A hand across his bicep reaching into the fridge, toes at his calf on the couch. 

Stupid things like nuggies and a punch to the chest.

Steve’s rancid pit shoved in his face fighting for the last bagel.

(He might even miss Sam’s constant fist bumping, but like hell he’s going to admit it, even to himself, laying in three day old clothes under a pile of pizza boxes and old boxers.)

His phone screams at him suddenly, so loud Bucky twists quick enough to feel lightning through his shoulder and the horrendous groan of his clavicle shifting. 

For several very long, very dismal seconds, he’s not sure what the hell his phone is yelling at him for. It’s not Steve’s ringtone, ( _America the Beautiful_ ). 

Sam isn’t calling him, ( _Free Bird_ ). His therapist isn’t either, ( _May it Be_ ).

The god-awful trilling is an alarm set for 3.17 pm. 

It takes Bucky another 16 seconds before he’s bolting upright, catapulting himself over his own balcony and grabbing the ledge of the window up to the left. Scaling one handed is a nightmare, on a good day.

By the time Bucky reaches the top, he’s too late, and the dumb as fuck mutt is happily munching on Bucky’s pansies.

He slumps down in defeat. 

There’s a half bent blue bic someone left behind and he grabs in on a whim. 

It takes a bit of work, pressing it straight enough to write with, but he lifts the leg of his jeans and scratches an angry face into his calf.

He’s not expecting any kind of response. 

But after he’s lain there a few more pitty minutes, he stands up and goes to tug his pant leg into place. 

There, right over his angry scrawl, are purple glittery fangs and a tiara. 

“What the fuck.”

Bucky licks his thumb and rubs his ink, until he’s left with a ridiculous smear of blue ink, two inverted triangles, and a damn tiara.

-

The dog is the official start to Bucky’s day, every day. He’s _up_ before the one-eyed demon arrives, but usually he’s skulking and drinking coffee in large amounts. 

Now though, with his heart rate way up and his muscles well warmed, he decides he should probably feed himself. 

Only, when he makes it to the refrigerator, he remembers that before the shower meltdown two days ago, he was supposed to go shopping.

Bucky hates shopping on a boring day, but half starved and having lost to Satan’s one-eyed fur ball? 

He kicks the counter hard and then groans at the splintered wood.

Bucky squeezes himself into a fresh-ish pair of black jeans, a long sleeve puke green henley, and the only heavy boots he owns. 

He still hasn’t mastered tying a knot one-armed, and his pants are a little slim in the thighs for tucking the sleeve into the pocket, so he steels himself for some stares.

He’s only going to corner bodega, getting a few things to tide him over. He’ll call Steve (and Sam), and maybe get social points for a group shopping trip. 

Mostly, he can’t remember what cheese Steve used to buy, the fancy shit that smelled awful but tasted like heaven.

Bucky _likes_ the bodega. It’s got a keysmash name in the worst possible font, and colors so garish even the blind are offended. 

The lady behind the desk, short with the world's broadest, meanest shoulders, is possibly as old as Bucky is and gives absolutely zero fucks about anything.

Including the one kid who is always shoving things in their mouths.

Currently, the little blue haired shit has the handle of a mug hanging from their teeth, and when they make eye contact with Bucky, they grin a little wider and add three sharpies.

Bucky stares back, a challenge, but he loses.

Whatever, he didn’t need mugs or sharpies.

He needs six suspicious looking egg salad sandwiches, a pack of flamin hot funyuns two days from going out of date, striped cakes with no clear branding, and two entire packs of _Eneraid_ in _RazzleDazzleBerryBurst_.

He drops them on the counter and MawMaw rings him up with her usual amount of incomprehensibly furious gibberish. (Actual gibberish. Bucky knows many, many languages, and this bears no resemblance to anything human.)

She pokes him in the stomach and it’s _disgusting_ , the little flutter of excitement that brings him. A bright, warm little spot that cracks up somewhere behind his bellybutton. 

He does manage to bite the purr down, if only barely, and the gream in grey-purple eyes tells him MawMaw knows exactly what he’s feeling.

“Ayeee! No!” MawMaw suddenly says in _perfect, New York English_.

Bucky frowns, because he _knows_ he has money on that card.

“It’s just-” 

MawMaw shoves around the counter and grabs a broom. Bucky does not envy the poor soul she’s slamming it against. 

Even if, upon turning around, he discovers that someone to be six feet six inches of adonis gold buried under some horrendous plum tracksuit and wearing three days worth of unwashed beard and hair. 

Bucky, inexplicably, wants to put his mouth all over the patch of pectoral he can see through a hole. 

“I swear! I have money!” The guy is saying.

“You bring trouble! All you ever bring in here is _trouble_ and your garbage disposal _beast_ ,” MawMaw says. She is doing her level best to beat candy out of the stranger who, for his part, is trying to hold an entire pizza and a pack of beers in one arm, a struggling mass of gold in the other, and avoid having candy beaten out of him.

Bucky goes to say something, to defend either Stranger or MawMaw (who knows), when the gold beast barks once.

Bucky knows that bark.

“You!” He snarls.

Everyone freezes. Beast, because he knows Bucky, Stranger, probably at the violence in his tone, and MawMaw because in three years Bucky has never once uttered any noise in front of her.

“Hit ‘em harder,” He tells MawMaw. 

He takes his stuff, drops too many $20’s on the counter and storms out.

Halfway home he remembers the card still sitting on the counter, but he figures he'll just make Sam replace it.

-

Bucky’s soulmate hasn’t written anything in sixteen hours, eleven minutes, and twenty one seconds. 

He’s not counting, or anything, but he’s good with numbers.

Bucky doesn’t really know how to communicate with this stranger who is usually, literally, written on his skin.

He hems and haws and doesn’t come up with anything until he scratches out a blue bic question mark across his hip. He’s laying on his couch, covered in stale bread crumbs and red powder, and his shirt has ridden up.

He’s lazy and grumpy, sue him.

He’s not expecting to see the heart mere seconds later, brilliant and sparkly and purple, and the size of a damn tennis ball. 

He’s even less prepared for the sudden, orange streak that splits down the middle, breaking the thing in half.

Bucky stares at it, unsure what to do next, so he decides to ignore it.

He goes about fitting his SI arm, and fiddling with the settings, ignoring the way the cold hum makes his insides squirm.

He buys actual groceries.

He starts laundry, and then gives up, and buys new underwear. His jeans don’t stink yet anyways.

-

It goes like that for several days. Bucky’s soulmate doesn’t write shit, until Bucky scribbles out a blue mark onto his ankle. 

He gets the same garrish heart, shattered bright orange down the middle, and then Bucky goes about his day.

He makes simple meals; pasta with a hearty sauce full of mushrooms and beef, four step breads with thick buttery crust, simple vegetables pan seared or sauteed. 

He does, eventually, get around to doing laundry. 

He ends up with a shitload of pink shirts and no socks.

He forgets to shower until his prosthetic gets tangled in his matted locks.

Bucky ends up staring up at the dusky sky with metal fingers twisted in his hair; when he yanks, his eyes water, and he’s surprised there aren’t _chunks_ of hair.

What surprises him the most, what really sparks a little bit of hope inside of him, is that not once does Lucifer’s Own Pubes attack his pansies.

-

Three weeks after MawMaw’s, Bucky has to throw open his window and chuck an entire burnt burnt loaf out the window. 

He hears the most gloriously excited yelp and he’d launch himself out of the window if smoke weren’t choking his lungs, but he’s already gearing up to scale his building. 

“Lucky!” Bucky hears, “Awe, Lucky, _no_.”

When Bucky sticks his head out the window, he’s met with an ass that beats Steve’s scrambling past his head. 

Bucky is, understandably, shocked, because this guy. This fucking natural abomination is using his _fingertips_ to climb up a building that even _Bucky_ struggles with. 

And he looks like he’s just strolling down an empty street.

Bucky launches himself up too, because as beautiful a work of art the leather clad back side is, _his pansies_!!

“No!” Bucky cries when he gets to the top. He stumbles two steps across the roof, then flops into a child’s cross-legged sit. His beautiful, raised beds. There’s dirt and petals and leaves strewn everywhere, and in the middle, a mass of gold shimmering in the sun sits happily munching on Bucky’s burnt bread. “Fuckin’,” he starts. 

The guy with the ass turns towards him, arm raised. “Hey now,” he says. “That’s my dog you’re threatening.”

“I didn’t,” Bucky begins once more.

“No, I know that tone of voice,” Buns says. “That’s _murder tone_ you got goin’ on there Buddy.”

Bucky really is about to refute that statement because his voice is more _defeated_ than _murderous_ , but.

The sunlight has a funky way of finding glitter and soaking in it. And this guy, this stranger leading around Hades's Baby on a leash, has an arm that is _saturated_ in horrible, terrible, neon ink in the worst shade of glittery purple. 

It’s all loops and valleys and hills. A strange topography of maybe-letters Bucky’s never totally learned, but recognizes all the same.

He reaches out and grabs the guy's wrist, and the flash of warmth and flesh that connects makes his whole body sparkle and fizz just like the god-awful ink. 

“Hey, now, let’s not-” 

Buck links his fingers through the guy’s and he studies all the scribbles. He traces a funky little triangle, two matching letters that are probably z’s and the question mark above them.

Bucky can’t help it. He pulls the guy in and squeezes him as close as he can. Bucky buries his face in the guy’s sweaty neck, inhales the scent of sweat and cheese and… something else, like he’s never really had a full breath before. “I don’t think Soulmarks work on prosthetics,” Bucky mumbles.

“I’m not sure I understand,” the guy says cautiously. But he calmly pets Bucky’s back, traces his thumb across the knuckles still holding his own.

Bucky digs around for his blue bic, but he can’t find it. He sees the pen sticking out behind the guy’s ear, and he grabs it. 

Bucky draws on the first skin he can, which happens to be his own collarbone. He spells his name out carefully.

The guy carefully lets go of Bucky’s shoulders and they both watch in awe as purple letters appear on really beautiful, golden skin. 

Bucky receives a blinding smile and blue eyes and a mouth that tastes like pizza for his troubles. “Hi, Bucky. I’m Clint. And you’re right, I don’t think it works on prosthetics.”

Bucky kinda hums, but mostly he’s chasing that flavor, basking in the warm, broad hands that are suddenly all over every inch of his skin.

“You gotta learn to love Lucky, too, though,” Clint says.

Bucky pulls back and eyes the plant ruiner and says, “Yeah, ok,” and goes right back to kissing chapped, warm, _real_ , lips.


End file.
